


A Dog And A Rabbit

by madassrabbits



Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots, joshler - Fandom
Genre: M/M, i typed this in a word doc and NOW ALL THE PARAGRAPH SPACES... R GONE
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-11-11
Updated: 2015-11-11
Packaged: 2018-05-01 05:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,185
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5193425
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/madassrabbits/pseuds/madassrabbits





	A Dog And A Rabbit

The air felt sticky against Tyler's skin as he exited the supermarket. The dark was looming, quiet, steady, he thought. It felt solid up above and around him, wind and streetlamps only adding to the atmospheric feeling. He exhaled and tucked his feet up onto the shopping cart, gliding slowly across the parking lot. A street lamp flickered. A dripping sound. He shut his eyes.  
"Tyler." He remembered Josh's rushed words, the way they brushed against his skin, warm, and thoughtful, and inviting. "Can you make it for one more night?" He'd asked. He'd asked so much. He'd do it. He'd done it before, for Josh.  
"Yes." He'd said back - A promise and a confession, an unfolding of tattered words against a pristine question. "Same place." He didn't pose it as a question. He squeezed Josh's shoulder.  
Similar to the way he squeezed the chipped red handle of the shopping cart that now carried him, across the parking lot, almost completely empty. The wheels made their noise and very little else did, (very little else felt the need to.) The dark carried him. The wheels hit a puddle, they splashed, and then the puddle was gone, behind him.  
He only came to a stop at the other side of the lot, letting the cart run into the side of a run-down laundrymat building. He'd gotten off, to leave the metal vessel unceremoniously alone against the brick. A temporary chariot. His eyes were open now. In his hands were two fudge bars, store brand. They'd begun sweating, cold water against Tyler's hand. He rounded the square building and hopped the small fence - reaching immediately for the cold, wet ladder that he'd climbed so many times before. It was the kind that you tucked as small as possible against the side of a building, intended only for roof repair, hardly even there at all. It was something you tried to ignore, this black ladder. He climbed it.  
"Hey." His voice said. There was something in it, rich with want.  
"Hello." He came over, passing him a half-melted fudge bar. The roof was littered with puddles, they stayed away from them, like they were the sea threatening to swallow them. Josh was sat on one of the few dry patches, his legs dangling over the side of the building.  
He was looking up at Tyler, something wide and profound in his eyes. Tyler maintained his gaze but more feebly. More quiet. Tyler sat down next to him and felt the darkness settle down with him.  
"It's cold." Josh said. He shoved his wrapper into his back pocket once he'd unwrapped his pop.  
Tyler nodded, he was wearing a hoodie. He didn't remember if it was Josh's or his.  
"Did you take the shopping cart over?" Josh asked.  
Tyler nodded.  
"The store doesn't like that."  
Tyler nodded again, meeting his gaze for a moment. "I know. I'll put it back."  
Josh nodded.  
Tyler took his hand.  
"One more night?" Josh asked. He was asking a lot, Josh thought.  
Tyler thought so too. "Yes." He said, without thinking much. It was cold, and he was going to put the shopping cart, and he had Josh's hand, and his popsicle was melting in its wrapper on the roof beside him. "One." He said.  
Josh nodded. He knew it was going to be more than one.  
Tyler was from a more urban part of Cincinnati, a more unfriendly part. Tyler often thought that this was one of their biggest differences - The way that Josh was raised and the school that he went to was entirely different from Tyler. It was funny, also, he thought, that they still lived so close; that they could have these wildly different upbringings while only a mile apart. That wasn't the point, however, the point is that Tyler was raised in the sort of environment that, for instance, encouraged one to leave shopping carts against the side of laundromats in a strip mall at 12 AM to meet up with your boyfriend every night. Josh wasn't, he'd put the shopping cart back. He probably wouldn't have taken the shopping cart in the first place.  
This same sort of environment fostered the idea that the poetry Tyler wrote and the boy that he loved were both entirely wrong things to have. Entirely and absolutely incorrect, bad, sinful, abhorrent. He'd grown dependent on God while being told that the same God hated him for these reasons. That's another reason why Josh always asked him: "Another night?" Because it was a daily sort of thing, a daily battle against the forces telling him the way he fucked and the things he wrote were sending him straight to hell. He didn't stop, however. He still fucked the same way and wrote the same things and he always thought it would be easier to let them go, but he didn't.  
Anything worth having was worth fighting for.  
"Hey." Josh said. He'd finished his popsicle and bent the stick but kept it together, just barely, by a few bits of wood. He'd bent it entirely in half. He showed it to Tyler with a smile. "I did it this time." Josh always tried to keep it from breaking when he bent it. Tyler took it from him for a moment to inspect it.  
"This is the nicest one, you should keep it." Tyler said, and looked at it for a moment before handing it back to him.  
Josh nodded, put it into his coat pocket, and took Tyler's hand again.  
Tyler watched the way his breath fogged the air. The way the faintly colorful lights of the strip mall illuminated his face, the bridge of his nose, his lips, the watery whites of his eyes.  
"Tyler." He said.  
Tyler continued to look at him. If he said "Tyler," instead of "Hey," it usually meant more, he found.  
"Would you rather be a dog or a rabbit." Josh asked. He spoke it like a statement, he didn't make eye contact.  
Tyler looked back, away from him, towards the parking lot they faced. A street lamp flickered, a car pulled away. He watched the cloud of moisture erupting from his own breath. "I don't know why you're asking, but I say rabbit."  
Josh looked at him. "What would you rather be, not what you necessarily are."  
Tyler looked down, at their feet. "You think I'm a rabbit?"  
"Metaphorically."  
"I know. How does the metaphor work."  
"Dogs and rabbits. Predator or prey."  
"Would I rather be predator, or prey?" Tyler asked, looking up at him now.  
"Yes." Josh said.  
Josh's hood was up, Tyler noticed. He looked back out at the parking lot, examined the burning in his chest, saw the reflection of the forgotten shopping cart in a puddle beneath their dangling feet. He watched the flickering lights of the twenty-four hour supermarket he so often appropriated the contents of. He thought of back home, the darkness around his house even in the sweltering daylight. He looked at Josh. He was wearing Tyler's hoodie, and Tyler was wearing his, he realized suddenly.  
"Prey." Tyler said.


End file.
